The Legend of Zelda: The Darkest Path
by Everlude
Summary: The land reeks of death. Boys not even in their teens are taken from their homes and trained to be soldiers. Blood stains the ground as the bearers of the triforce live through their darkest lives yet.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own The Legend of Zelda including any characters I use from any of the games. I do own any OCs I create and the plot.

**Note:** This story will be a mixed-up jumble of OoT, TP, and SS.

**Note 2:** Updates will be sporadic.

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**The Legend of Zelda: The Darkest Path**

The land reeks of death. Boys not even in their teens are taken from their homes and trained to be soldiers.

Blood stains the ground as the bearers of the triforce live through their darkest lives yet.

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**Prologue**

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"Open up in the name of the kingdom!" Captain Bolbec called out quietly in his deep voice as his fist pounded against the wooden door of the orphanage. A man in his prime, Captain Bolbec was a tall man with broad shoulders and a deep barreled chest. Dressed in the armor of a solider with a red captain's cloak fastened to his shoulders.

Under the constant banging of his fist, the wooden door slowly creaked open revealing an aging woman with more gray in her hair than anything, the lines on her face making her look far older and more tired than she most likely was. Her brown eyes took in the sight of the captain and the men standing behind him. It wasn't the first time the woman had been visited late in the night by a group such as this one, so she already knew why they were there.

"Is it time for another reaping already?" she asked with tired resignation in her voice as she opened the door wider to allow the men inside. Nodding, the captain motioned for his men to spread out and search the orphanage with a dismissive flick of his wrist.

"My men will try their best to not cause any harm to your property ma'am," Captain Bolbec assured the woman. "Would you care to tell me how many potentials you have for us this time?" Closing her eyes, the woman raised a hand to rub at her temples as if to offset an oncoming headache.

"That depends, Captain, on whether your men deem two of the boys I have to be old enough or not. If not, you can expect them to return with four." Turning her back to the captain so he wouldn't see the few tears that slipped from the corners of her eyes, she wiped them away while pretending to be interested in a shelf on the wall.

"So, four at worst and six at best," the captain murmured quietly, raising a hand to stroke his beard. Add those to the number they'd already picked up earlier in the night, and his company would be returning with near thirty new potentials. Normally, if his company was in charge of a normal reaping, that number would be far too small, but a dark reaping was a different matter entirely.

Unlike a normal reaping which was done in broad daylight, a dark reaping took place in the dead of the night. No regular houses were visited, and nobody other than the orphanage caregivers were to know they'd even been there. Boys reaped from a normal home were allowed to say goodbye to their parents with promises ringing in their ears of becoming grand soldiers who would make their families proud while they went on grand adventures and fought in glorious battles.

Captain Bolbec had been on a few normal reapings, and had come to hate them as he practically ripped young boys from their weeping mother's arms. It had reached the point that he dreaded being order to take a group of men out to perform a reaping, so when he was approached with an offer to be relieved of his duties involving reaping, he'd jumped at the chance.

Had he not been so drunk, Captain Bolbec would never have agreed to his new position. Dark reapings. He would have given his right arm to be able to return to normal reapings after his first dark reaping, but once a dark reaper always a dark reaper is what he'd been told when he asked to go back to normal duty. As a dark reaper, nobody other than the men that followed his orders on the reapings and the superior he reported to could know what he was doing.

A secret project of the kingdom, dark reaping stole orphaned boys from their beds in the quiet hours of the night every time there was a new moon. While the boys taken from their families on a normal reaping were young, perhaps seven to ten years in age, the boys taken on a dark reaping were even younger at the tender age of three or four.

Once removed from the orphanages, the young boys would be taken to a secret training post where they would be raised at all hours of the day to become the most loyal and efficient soldiers the kingdom had ever seen. From the rumors he'd caught wind of from his superior, whom he didn't even know the face of, the reason for the dark reapings was to raise a group of soldiers, if they could really be called such, which could replace the Sheikah.

In a way, the rumor made sense to Captain Bolbec. Caught up in the large civil war that they were; which had been waged for nearly a decade, many were uneasy to trust the Sheikah to guard the royal family. If the shadow folk could be replaced by extremely effective soldiers with skills far above those of a normal soldier, no one would complain or even question where such soldiers had come from.

And if the higher ups had their way, no one outside of those directly involved would ever know how such soldiers came to be. Unfortunately, for Captain Bolbec, unlike the men who followed his orders who had no idea what happened to the boys after they passed them off at the waypoint, he knew. His superior had taken him to the training post once; of course, he'd been blind folded so he'd never be able to find the place on his own, but while he was there he learned just what the young boys he was taking from the orphanages would be facing day in and day out for more than a decade. If they could even survive that long. The survival rate for the program was dismally low.

Hearing the sound of his men as they descended the stairs, Captain Bolbec shook himself from his thoughts which had made his stomach knot and his insides grow cold, frowning. It was better if he didn't think of such things, it only made his job harder.

Looking to who he could best describe as his right hand man, Fargo, Captain Bolbec was surprised to see the man holding a hand to his nose which was bleeding slightly. Raising an eyebrow, Bolbec waited for Fargo to approach him before questioning him.

"Is walking around in the dark without running into something that hard, Fargo?"

"No, Sir." Removing his hand, Fargo allowed Bolbec to get a better look at his face. Besides his light nose bleed, the man also had a bruise appearing on his cheek underneath his right eye. Turning his head to look at the other men, Fargo pointed to one who had a small form slung over his shoulder after a moment. "It was that little guy there. Cellus wasn't sure if he looked old enough, so I went to take a look, but the little bugger woke up and rather than just sit there confused or start crying, he lashed out at me. He got two decent punches in before I could grab his hands, and then he tried to kick and headbutt me before Cellus could knock him out with the drug."

Blinking in surprise, Captain Bolbec motioned for Cellus, the man carrying the boy, to join him and Fargo. Not bothering to speak, Bolbec walked around Cellus to get a look at the young boy's face. Blond hair hung limply around his lightly tanned face. Sleeping, he hardly looked like a threat, though, the captain doubted he looked like much of a threat when he was awake either. Still, he'd need every last drop of his fighting spirit if he was going to survive to be an adult, or even just a teenager.

"Oh no, not Link." The whisper was quiet, barely reaching the captain's ears, but he could hear the sadness in the voice of the old woman whom he'd nearly forgotten was even there. Sparing a glance over his shoulder, he could see her staring at the young blond boy with pain in her eyes. Captain Bolbec bit the inside of his lip. Link. He hated learning the names of the boys, it made it that much harder to hand them off at the waypoint and send them to their fate.

Realizing he still had a job to do, Captain Bolbec looked around at the rest of the men, counting the number of small forms resting over their shoulders. Five. Apparently, the last boy the old woman had mentioned was too young. Making sure he had his men's attention, Captain Bolbec motioned towards the door, following behind his men as they made their way out the door into the black night. On his way out, he rested his hand briefly on the old woman's shoulders, his throat beginning to feel tight.

"We'll be back. Take care of yourself until then ma'am." He couldn't bear to look at her. He knew she was crying, and at his words she began to quietly sob.

"Why? Where are you taking them? Why can't I know? Why do you take them so much younger than the boys that have families? Why do you have to come in the middle of the night?" Tightening his grip on the old woman's shoulder momentarily, Captain Bolbec wished he could answer her questions, but even if he did, the answers might leave her with more grief than the pain of ignorance.

"Good night ma'am."

Making sure to close the door soundly behind him, Captain Bolbec didn't even look at his men as he walked passed them and led the way into the dark streets. He'd be getting very drunk when this was over.

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**Reviews are appreciated.**


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